


Flint

by orphan_account



Series: Rush Summer [3]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Closeted Character, Culture Shock, Gen, Rush Valley, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 07:25:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The roof tiles leave dark imprints like crocodile scales in her skin. The moon’s scythe smile curves into the heavens; in Xingese legend, she was a princess who sacrificed herself to save her lover and her kingdom. Sacrifice for her man. Sacrifice for Xing. All that ever was or will be, for her. Up here the breeze lifts her flyaway strands of hair and whisks away the gathering beads of sweat. She breathes. Foreign dust and silt settle in her mouth; her nostrils burn from the stench of oil and piss. A handful of alleycats have already commenced their midnight orchestra. Singing drifting in and out of tune dissipates from the open pubs.</p>
<p>The stars have never looked so far away.</p>
<p>-------------------------------------------------------</p>
<p>Or, in which Lan Fan smashes her head against the wall of Amestrisian customs, Winry complains about being busty, and Ling intends to woo himself a new wife in the form of a ten-year-old Ishvalan boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flint

**Author's Note:**

> The story so far: Two years after the Promised Day, Ling Yao and Lan Fan arrived in Rush Valley to visit only for Lan Fan's automail to break. Because the repairs will take a few days, Ling and Lan Fan are staying at Winry's newly opened automail shop. While the Elrics take their journey around the world, Winry, a polyamorous pansexual, is in an open relationship with Paninya, and they have taken on an apprentice, a ten-year-old Ishvalan boy named Akihi. Secretly, Ling has asked Winry to help Lan Fan, who has closed herself off in her two years in Xing. 
> 
> Due to inquiries, I can confirm that Lan Fan is indeed a transwoman because that's my headcanon for her. She has accepted it, but at the moment only she, Ling, and May Chang are aware of that. As clear in the chapter itself, she's also hiding some closeted feelings. After all, Rush Summer is meant to be a one-way character development/character exploration piece as well as a chance for me to flesh out some female friendships.
> 
> The chapters will focus mostly on Lan Fan's relationships to Winry and Paninya, both of whom are foils to various aspects of her personality, as will become more evident over the progress of the fic. This early, after all, she's just experiencing the culture clash, but already the differences are becoming apparent.
> 
> We may well see a surprise visit from a few other important female characters.
> 
> Please note: I have no idea how breasts work. If I screwed up, please let me know.

“That apprentice of yours,” says Ling around a massive mouthful of duck,“is a blessing on this nation. With your permission, Winry, may I ask for his hand in marriage?” Winry and Paninya laugh, the latter ruffling the aforementioned apprentice's hair. With a sheepish smile Akihi dips his head and mutters a thank-you. He carefully pours himself another bowl of the still-steaming vegetable soup without spilling a single drop. Inquires if anyone else wishes for seconds. Paninya’s bowl pings against the pot within seconds. Ling quirks an eyebrow. “Oh, but I’m quite serious here. I came to Amestris seeking a wife, and since my lovely advisers have been badgering me like a kennel of dumb dogs fighting over who gets to piss on a tree stump first, I’m back in Amestris again to find one twice over.” He sweeps a hand in a gesture that would look grander if he were not holding a drumstick. “Such a fine country with kind, beautiful women and kind, beautiful men. And your fiancé.”

Winry rolls her eyes and jabs his arm with a fork. “He’s not that bad.”

“But he’s nothing compared to the beauty of your apprentice. Akiho?”

“Aknhm.” Paninya gulps down her bite of stew and tries again: “Akihi. Call ‘im Aki.”

Ling grins at the Ishvalan boy, who shrinks visibly, and at this Lan Fan presses her palm to the Emperor’s arm warningly. His _chi_ flinches at the contact, warms, ripples. “Master Ling,” she says, he requested—ordered—for her to set aside _Emperor_ or _my lord_ or any variant thereof during the trip, “you’re scaring the boy.”

Lowering his hands from his face, Akihi blinks at her. She notes the tempered hint of gratitude in his scarlet irises. Despite the disparity between violet and red, in the bluish light of the kitchen past sunset, several strategic candles pooling yellow amid the navy-grey streaming in from the windows, his eyes take on a maroon sheen. The monster that once lurked in her master’s form. Black claws smeared with dried blood. Sharp teeth hidden in a mouth built for women and wine.  Her fingers clench. The tendons in the back of her hand crest into the skin. The nerves in her left shoulder twinge uncomfortably, and she hides her fist below the table.

Concern. Lan Fan lifts her head. Winry is frowning. Her expression resembles a loyal dog perplexed at the commanding of its loving owner yet struggling to please nevertheless. Lan Fan gifts her a smile of sorts, but her friend’s grimace deepens, her chin furrowing.“Are you okay, Lan Fan?”

The vassal studies the scraps of half a duck on her plate. “As always, of course.” Selecting a stretch of skin that seems vaguely palatable, she glares at the wobble in the fork she takes in her non-dominant hand. The downwards tipping of Ling’s lips reflects her frown. Lan Fan spears the uneaten portion of her dinner and tears off a chunk with her teeth.

“Lan Fan?” Ling, now. Worrying for her with such intensity. His perturbed _chi_ lashing within him. She will have to remind him to control this weakness. At least in court he generally keeps his _chi_ drawn within him, like a teardrop of water held together tightly: A thin film may appear transparent, yet the ocean clothes herself in opaque tints of green and blue.

“I promise that I’m all right.”

The line of his mouth thins uncharacteristically, but then he nods, smiles, returns to joking with Akihi and Paninya. Winry reveals the details of some affair regarding a client’s cat sneaking into the workshop and the wild chase to get the damn thing out—Alphonse had sent her a particularly snappish letter in response and evidently claimed that she was as heartless as his brother—while Paninya relates almost killing one of her chimaera friends with a rusty pipe due to him thinking himself invited to the house in the middle of the night.

When Akihi excuses himself from the table to fetch dessert, Lan Fan indicates her fullness and melts into the shadows out the back porch. In truth, she could hardly refer to it as a porch: The open garage leads to an area reserved for drop-off and pick-up of machinery and parts, but someone, presumably Winry, has adapted part of it into an Amestrisian porch of sorts. An extendable blue-and-gold hanging roof shades three chairs chained to the side of the building, a miniature generator capable of powering a small icebox for drinks hidden in the cellar. Normally she would merely climb up to the shade and from there to the roof, but the absence of her left arm complicates matter somewhat. Spotting several delivery boxes awaiting pick-up, she pushes them against the wall. Though her centre of gravity feels off and the climb dizzies her slightly, she clambers onto the fabric hanging. Her feet waver on the thick steel poles fixed into the edifice itself. When she reaches up to press her arm into the roof a half-metre above, she senses the world reeling around her. Falls into the scooped hanging. The material bounces and strains around her, her weight pulling it taut. A hammock. Grimacing, she grips the metal edge with her flesh hand and begins the arduous process of lifting herself up with one arm. The fabric shifts under her. Her sinews stretch painfully, her joints threatening to pop, but she pushes down forcefully and swings a leg up. Her knee hooks successfully around the pole. The material bends about her. A tearing noise. As rapidly as she can, she inches her body over the pole until she clings to it horizontally. From there she glances down at the shade: The jagged rip extends down one of the saffron stripes.

Sweat plasters her hair to her forehead. Not even the sweltering capital of Xing, nestled in the warm central region, could compare to the heat rolling from the ground.

The roof tiles leave dark imprints like crocodile scales in her skin. The moon’s scythe smile curves into the heavens; in Xingese legend, she was a princess who sacrificed herself to save her lover and her kingdom. Sacrifice for her man. Sacrifice for Xing. All that ever was or will be, for her. Up here the breeze lifts her flyaway strands of hair and whisks away the gathering beads of sweat. She breathes. Foreign dust and silt settle in her mouth; her nostrils burn from the stench of oil and piss. A handful of alleycats have already commenced their midnight orchestra. Singing drifting in and out of tune dissipates from the open pubs.

The stars have never looked so far away.

Lan Fan dips into the _chi_ to ensure Master Ling remains safe and secure. From what she can sense, he hasn’t moved from the kitchen and is now conversing with Paninya or napping. She orders herself to memorise Paninya and Akihi’s signatures. Perching on the back end of the roof, she hangs her legs freely from the side. Her fingers draw patterns in the dust of their own accord, but she quells her movements. Allows stillness, peace, tranquility to flow over her. Anger, fear, and longing can do little but distract her: Two years of shadowing the Emperor have proven that over and over again. Every few weeks some Xingese historians announces that Emperor Ling has had more assassins sent after him than any other in history. Although she doubts that figure, considering the small percentage of attempted assassinations that become known even to the rest of the court, sometimes she feels very small under the burden of the physical exhaustion that presses upon her bowed bones and sinks its canines into her spirit.

Only human.

For all of her training, for all of her ability to read _chi_ as though it flowed from her flesh, for all of her loyalty and resolve and—love—for her _country_ —

She is only human.

A human with a spirit none could conquer. A human who would never give up. Yet a human regardless.

Behind her, a flash of _chi_ She’s on the front pads of her feet in an instant, a hidden knife drawn from a slit at her thigh, prior to sensing Winry’s presence.

The woman lifts her hands and waves pathetically. “Heyo, Lan Fan, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Lan Fan returns the blade to its compartment and bows deeply at the waist. “My apologies, Winry.”

“Heheh. I’m so used to being called _Win_ now that I’m thinking of changing my name to Nike.” At Lan Fan’s blank stare, Winry takes a step forward. “The Xerxian goddess of victory?”

“Ah.” She gives the woman a curt nod.

Winry gestures at the end of the roof. “Mind if I sit?”

“Mm.”

Her body radiates warmth as she settles down beside the vassal. Their thighs touch. Winry gathers her thin ponytail and twists the hair into a bun. “So it doesn’t get all weird and sticky on my neck,” she says conversationally. “It’s hotter here than Resembool. Where Ed’n’Al’n’I are from.” The corners of her mouth curl upwards. A moon brighter than the one in the sky. “But if I can survive my first summer here, I can survive anything, right?”

“The sharpest steel is forged in the hottest furnace.” The maxim rings hard: It bore her through her training years of pain and falling down and getting back up.

“Damn straight.” Winry snickers at some inside joke. The pale light highlights her hair in silver, rouges her cheeks in white. When she abruptly throws her arms around Lan Fan, the latter freezes, liquid cold pumping sluggishly through her veins. “I haven’t seen you in two years, which is pretty much the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Would it kill you to write me a letter sometimes?” The taller woman’s soft breast rides Lan Fan’s shoulder, her open stomach cradling the sharp lines of her side. “Though I guess you gotta focus on _Ling Ling Ling_ , right? How have you _been_?”

Lan Fan returns the embrace with a too-quick squeeze. Citing the temperature, she pulls away. Her eyelids lower until her world narrows to pulses of _chi_ “Master Ling has been working on abolishing the Clan system,” she begins after a moment, “in all but name. Families stay together, but no pecking order or ranking exists—”

“I’m pretty sure I asked how _you’ve_ been, not how Ling’s been.” Winry’s tone suggests her grimace. “Trust me: He’s already yapped my ear off with that garbage.”

“—although there are those who insist he intends to keep the Yao upon the throne forever.” Winry sighs. Lan Fan smiles crookedly. “Others wish to regain their former wealth and status. His advisers are demanding he marry the fifty wives or at least produce heirs with another Clan before the entire country erupts in civil war.” Her stomach roils internally. She compresses her abdomen with her palm. “He told me he doesn’t want heirs.” Another roil, more like a trash, as though a beast has awoken within her middle fixated on strangling her before the treasonous words can spill from her lips. “I know he’s lying.”

A heavy weight on her left shoulder. She opens her eyes slightly and glances right. Winry has slung an arm around her, hand on her collarbone. “Probably. That guy can go from airhead ditz to unbelievably intense in the space of two seconds, but he’s lying out the ass if he said he didn’t like kids.” A pause. The woman’s lips open in an _O_ “But you don’t want kids, do you?”

With some difficulty Lan Fan unclenches her jaw. “It has nothing to do with me. But no.” A light blush to her cheeks. “Perhaps I would like to someday raise a child, but . . .” She coughs. The inner walls of her throat ache.

“But pregnancy just isn’t your thing?” At first Lan Fan starts to shake her head, but then she nods instead. Easier that way. Winry shrugs. The movement brushes the swell of her breast against the vassal’s upper arm. The zipper on the bra tinkles cheerily. “That’s fine, y’know. Plenty of people adopt. I heard from Riza—that’s Captain Hawkeye—that she and Roy might adopt if that anti-frat law is ever lifted, that sort of thing. Paninya, too. Says being a mother just isn’t for her. Me, I want my own kids.” Her irises shine, sky-blue patches of sky shimmering dreamily. “Ed told me once it’s a shame guys can’t have kids.” Lan Fan shifts uncomfortably. “But maybe it’s a good thing, too: They’re lazy enough _without_ any extra excuses.” Winry chuckles at herself.

Lan Fan shrugs. “Master Ling rarely sleeps more than four hours a night.”

Winry pokes her tongue out, pinkish against her tanned skin. “You’re no fun.”

“So I’m told.”

The mechanic swings her feet over the edge, kicking languidly at open air. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

Lan Fan closes her eyes again. Master Ling’s _chi_ has transferred vertically and settled into the calm of sleep. “I guard him. I sleep in the rafters of his chambers when I can.”

“They don’t let you in his chambers?” Winry’s inflection betrays her incredulity. “What, ‘cause you’re a girl or something?”

She shakes her head. “When I can _sleep_ ” Winry inhales sharply. If Master Ling trusts her, then so will she. Prior to his death, her grandfather kept her secrets: Now they rattle about inside her, swallows in an overfilled cage. “Assassins are quick and clever. Many received the same training I did, and more years of it beside. Increasingly the more noble Clans, clinging as they are to the threads of their former power—with the last of their wealth they are intent on deposing him.”

“Oh my God,” Winry breathes. “L-Ling never mentioned . . .” Her voice wavers. Lan Fan has never seen her cry but for the Elrics; her flesh crawls. “. . . _anything_ of this.” Another hug, this one warm and wet on her neck, and she ensures she keeps her arm flush between them.

“Then there are the cults who think Amestris tainted him. That he isn’t the Son of Heaven and that the Mandate has been broken. His mother died birthing him, and they claim _that_ an omen.” A garrote twisted around a tender throat. An automail blade sliced deftly through a man’s belly and chest. A kunai flash followed by the cracking thud of a body and a crossbow toppling to the floor at once. The sole weapon she has not added to her arsenal is poison, reserved for those who murder in offence, and even then she learned the various venoms, their effects and symptoms, their antidotes. “They are mad. And yet the bodies pile.”

She has a feeling that she couldn’t break through Winry’s hard skull if she tried. The woman deepens the embrace. “It’s okay to cry if you want to,”

Lan Fan’s jaw aches. She digs her nails into her thigh. Her teeth grind painfully against one another. “Thank you for the offer.” The last tear to stain her cheeks with weakness belong to her grandfather. Discounting Master Ling’s potential demise, may he live forever—the irony stabs her through the chest and crushes her heart between blocks of granite—the tears will remain with his memory as long as breath stirs in her lungs. “Thus, I have had little time to write letters or even to consider myself as anything but his faithful guard.”

“Lan Fan.” Presently Winry’s voice effects a certain fiery quality. Removing her face from the vassal’s neck, she exhales harshly into her ear. “I know that you have to serve Ling and all, but you’re your own person too. You’ve got to understand that.”

Amestris could not entrap her. Amestris sees good and evil in a cleanly delineated horizon with perhaps a meddling of grey at the midline. Yet Amestris walks along whichever path it chooses. Xing paints white and black upon the eternally spinning disc with the nothingness of wuji stabilising the balance, and in that manner Xing follows the footsteps of duty and honour.

“I _understand_ ,” she says with a tongue sharp as the tip of her kunai, “that things are different your country. But in Xing, I am bound. I swore my life to the Emperor, and until my dying breath, I shall serve him.”

She watches Winry’s chest rise. Fall. Her tongue bulges one cheek, then the other, as her features contort, passing from confusion to dawning epiphany to frustration to anger to acceptance. Despite her name, she cannot win. Her bloodline and upbringing have granted her cards wholly unlike those Lan Fan would crush between steel fingers. In a way Lan Fan pities her: She has no purpose in life but survival, but that which she gives herself. At least _she_ , and Master Ling, always tread a familiar path. He, the Emperor. She, his shadow.

“It’d be dumb of me to keep asking, wouldn’t it?” Though Winry’s inflection tilts upwards at the final syllables, her solemn gaze cedes no question to her words. “I get it, you know. A-and I respect Xing; you of all people understand that, right? But at the same time I . . . I don’t want to see you suffering like this. Bound, like you said. You can’t choose a life for yourself?”

The light of the moon recedes behind a dark cloud. “I _have_ chosen. Of my own accord I became his vassal.” Her grandfather would have beat the note of arrogance in her voice, but she prefers the term _pride_ Master Ling has granted her that much, and would grant her more beside if she did not nimbly twist her out of every opportunity. Slippery as a hagfish, and just as charming. “I _wanted_ to serve him. Or why do you think I spent years breaking my body in training? Simply for show?”

Winry’s cheeks flush a brilliant pink. Her gaze flicks away, her pupils wide in from the nighttime dark. “Ling thought you were forced into it.”

Her pulse pounds at her temple. Normally she would pinch the webbing between her forefinger and thumb until the headache subsided, yet even she cannot contort her wrist to do so one-handed. Surely Master Ling hasn’t her secrets. Then again, they are _his_ to reveal as he sees fit. “If I did not believe him capable of being a worthy Emperor, I would deserted long ago, no matter how I came to be his retainer.”

“But what other choice did you _have_?” The woman sits up, rocking her hips to straighten herself, and Lan Fan inches away. “Become a wife and give some douchelord a million kids? Work as a servant or a barmaid for the rest of your life? B-become a harlot?” Winry licks her lips, her thin eyebrows drawing together in thought. “I mean, I don’t really _know_ what Xingese life is like.” She squares her shoulders. “But from what I’m getting it sounds like it was training, or death. They treat girls like property there, don’t they?”

The medley of horror and offence on her face bids Lan Fan laugh. A sigh of relief rushes over her lower lip. The taut muscle about her shoulder blades relax; her upper spine slopes gently. “Although I must admit that Xing doesn’t treat her women well—” The blasphemous words leave an acrid bitterness on her tongue. “—I still chose to serve as his vassal and as his guard. Otherwise, why have you not chosen to tackle the Führership?”

She responds with a noncommittal wave of the hand not around the vassal’s shoulders. “Politics aren’t really my thing. But I heard that the fight’s gone down between a Xingese guy and a woman. Amestris isn’t perfect, but it isn’t as bad as you think.” Leaning forward, she quiets her voice to a conspiratory whisper, and Lan Fan finds herself squeezing her thighs together. “Just between you and me, I think Armstrong’s policies make more sense, but Roy’s a close friend, so I’m worried I’d be biased.” She sticks her tongue out. “So if I wanted to, I could up and be Führer. You couldn’t magically be the Emperor, could you?”

Lan Fan narrows her eyes. “There have been Empresses.”

“Oh?” The woman’s eyebrows curve in half-question marks.

“Few and far between.” Mostly in stories, legends, ballads. Occasionally a woman ruled upon the Emperor’s death if she had gained popularity with the people, but even then Lan Fan could not say whether the power lay in her palm or in her advisors’. “I was not noble-born.”

“Ugh, nobility.” Winry wrinkles her nose as though the vassal had thrust a putrid fish tail up her nostrils. “Anyway, I’m glad they trained you in kickpunching ass at least. You’re right about one thing: I heard being a woman in the military’s awful.” She clutches Lan Fan’s shoulder, her fingers sinking red into her flesh. “Lieutenant Catalina—Riza introduced us during one of those silly military balls; I got Ed to sneak us in on his old credentials ‘cause that food could stop a war all by itself—said she gets whacked on the butt all the time. At least if they’re subordinates she can kick their asses to the next world over, but her superiors. Blergh, right?” Lan Fan lets out something like a grunt. “‘Course, Ling told me that anyone who puts a hand on you’s like to lose it. So you go, girl.”

Winry punches her shoulder lightly. The vassal’s stomach churns. Her legs wobble, like they had been filled with gelatin without her noticing, and she shuts her eyes and dry-swallows to keep the searing bile from spilling into her mouth. “I have a different reason for not allowing inappropriate touches,” she says evenly after some time, “but never mind.”

“You sure?” Back to the tilted head and the one-armed hug. “You can tell me anything, you know.”

“I know.”

Silence. In the street below someone sets off a firecracker. A _whizz_ of ash. The explosion cleaves the sky in spring-green lights and mocks the stars for their dimness. Peals of laughter bubble up to the roof, less dense than the humid atmosphere. A wave of heat rolls over the women, and Winry unzips her bra to the midline. Respectfully Lan Fan averts her gaze. On the roof of the building over lounges a cat which stretches itself elegantly and bounces to its paws. The creature provides a welcome distraction from her increasing awareness of Winry digging a handkerchief out of a pocket and wiping the sweat from between and under her breasts.

“It _sucks_ having boobs,” she blurts from nowhere. Lan Fan buries her face in her hand. “They’re useless and big and get in the way of _everything_ , ugh. Can’t get all close to the table to check out the junk I’m working on without _thwump_ goes the boob. And my morning jogs make me feel like I just broke my back. And _underboob rashes_ I’m pretty sure God slapped ‘em on as a joke and forgot to take ‘em off.” Winry bumps her with a hip. “Don’t you wish you could just take ‘em off for a day or two? Yeesh.”

Lan Fan rivets her gaze to the cat, but the animal, perhaps startled by the noise, flees into the alleyway. “I wouldn’t know.”

Winry _pop_ s her lips. “Maybe I should start binding my breasts. Your chest looks so slender, so not-annoying. And you can always unbind them for funtime, heh?”

Another firecracker, this one sun-gold as the _feng_ of the Yao. Vomit burns the back of her mouth. Beyond May Chang, the only physician she trusts in all of Xing, Lan Fan cannot recall holding a longer conversation with a woman in years. The warmth, the proximity, the possibility of Winry discovering—

Lan Fan stands suddenly. The shaken-off weight of Winry’s arm marks a bruise to attend to later; her unbalanced form nearly tips over the edge. Before the woman can open her mouth to protest, Lan Fan fishes out an alibi—“I’m tired,” she mutters—and slips her feet forward. Landing in the hanging, she hears it tear around her. Yet the momentary pain of rear end slamming against the sharp corners of boxes solely drives her forward. Holding onto the memory of agony tightly, she takes in her world in staccatoed beats: _Window. Open. Climb. Shut._ Chi _. Ling. Emperor. Safe. Warm. Asleep. Bed. Foot._

She curls up on the floor at the end of the bed. Her Emperor nestles in a barricade of pillows and blankets, a fortified castle befitting a northern winter rather than the sweltering valley. As usual he constructed a human-shaped space beside him. For when he inevitably rolls, of course.

He will awaken tomorrow horizontally, with half the pillows strewn on the floor and a single blanket gingerly, lovingly tucked around his splayed limbs.

She has no guards to cover her. Yet none knows of his side-trip to Rush Valley, and the minutest change in _chi_ has and would startle her from slumber.

For now, she wills herself into an uneasy sleep, praying under her breath that the burden not snap her shoulders yet.


End file.
